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Good News, Everybody!

From the patch notes:

Captain:

Slightly increased the power restore of Improved Defensive Strike
Reduced the Fate contribution from In Defence of Middle-Earth
Reduced the ICPR buff from Herald/Banner of Hope
Slightly Reduced the ICPR buff from Tactic-Focus and Song-Brother

IDOME is still nerfed, but our skill cost increases apparently have not gone through. Also, Defensive Strike's power restore got increased rather than decreased like on Bullroarer. Should be a net gain for us, even if a small one.

Cainwen Ciaphas, Captain of Crickhollow, HERO OF MIDDLE EARTH!!!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My opinions are my own!

Just got through a run of Battle for Erebor, and it's a really fun raid for Captains. For those who don't know, it features two troll bosses and a set of banner challenges to make the fight harder. One of the banner challenges causes the trolls to deal massive damage if their morale differs by more than a slight amount -- older players might remember this mechanic from Ost Dunhoth's huorn fight. This is great for Captains, because we have so many knobs to tweak when it comes to controlling our group's DPS: banners, -Brother skills, and marks all contribute to the group's damage, so it really rewards paying attention and knowing our class more than just mindlessly burning stuff down as quickly as possible.

Cainwen Ciaphas, Captain of Crickhollow, HERO OF MIDDLE EARTH!!!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My opinions are my own!

Thanks Furtim! Just what I was looking for. I just joined the game and got my main cappy to 48.. I didn't mind the lack of damage like a lot of other people. It's not my job to say what a class or shouldn't do, just to enjoy the class that I enjoy the most haha. I thought the only problem was how power hungry we are when we are in a position where we have to go through our rotations very quickly.. And when I heard about increasing power costs .. I was gonna go punch a baby or something man.

IDOME is still nerfed, but our skill cost increases apparently have not gone through. Also, Defensive Strike's power restore got increased rather than decreased like on Bullroarer. Should be a net gain for us, even if a small one.

There were multiple changes to the power costs during the different Beta Builds...
I could be wrong here, but I think that on Live I see exactly the same power costs as in the last round of changes on Bullroarer (B5): 170 power for threatening shout, battle-shout, grave wound, sure strike, defensive strike. Do you have any screenshots from Bullroarer to check that?

I don't have screenshots. You may in fact be correct, and the patch notes just chose not to itemise the power changes to skills.

But the amount of power restoration from Defensive Strike being reverted/increased is still definitely a good thing. I noticed it returns something like twice as much power as the skill costs, which seems about right.

Cainwen Ciaphas, Captain of Crickhollow, HERO OF MIDDLE EARTH!!!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My opinions are my own!

IIRC, it has an inherently higher crit multiplier than our other skills to begin with, and the contribution from our Crit Rating should be added directly to that. I think my Crit Rating was giving ~20% Crit Magnitude or something, and there's also the 15% Crit Magnitude from 2 LtC, so a crit on SL will do at minimum 1.85 times the already-high base damage of the skill.

I ran a crafting instance earlier today and noticed quite a few normal crits breaking the 4.5k range that previously I could only surpass with devastates. Pretty cool.

Cainwen Ciaphas, Captain of Crickhollow, HERO OF MIDDLE EARTH!!!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My opinions are my own!

IIRC, it has an inherently higher crit multiplier than our other skills to begin with, and the contribution from our Crit Rating should be added directly to that. I think my Crit Rating was giving ~20% Crit Magnitude or something, and there's also the 15% Crit Magnitude from 2 LtC, so a crit on SL will do at minimum 1.85 times the already-high base damage of the skill.

I ran a crafting instance earlier today and noticed quite a few normal crits breaking the 4.5k range that previously I could only surpass with devastates. Pretty cool.

Someone also said 2nd age LI DPS went up, but I didn't have a before/after comparison.

I also forgot that I had switched to 4 Command 2 Perseverence, which gave me 10%. Didn't used to use 5 command soloing.

Cappy u10 good things_Now i can mix more bonuses (2 pers 4 command ftw)
_Almost infinite power, i stopped after 5 minute of dummy fighting with 3/5 power. in U9 the power lasted not more than 1,5 min. Great power pool, huge icpr
_About +8-9% more DPS : bigger crits (need to test on heals too), and boost weap DPS (but still needs more tests)
_Some gain on p\e and mitigations
_Not tested yet, but cappy soloing in the moors looks more possible with bfp

I like the hyboldt. But in larger group content, the +10% damage from Command seems really hard to turn down, particularly once it is adding 10% to a raids worth of DPS. If I'm healing a 3 man and we're having trouble, I'd be more inclined to use hyboldt. But at least healing Iorbars peak, I do fine with LtC/Command/Perseverence...

I like the hyboldt. But in larger group content, the +10% damage from Command seems really hard to turn down, particularly once it is adding 10% to a raids worth of DPS. If I'm healing a 3 man and we're having trouble, I'd be more inclined to use hyboldt. But at least healing Iorbars peak, I do fine with LtC/Command/Perseverence...

It has it's place - it's a great compliment to a command/perseverance captain, since I don't think the command bonuses stack....

Maley Oakensage, Captain of Elendilmir

Alas Elendilmir, may you *jingle jangle* forever in the Forgotten West

I'm not liking these changes to how power works in update 10. Fate is now just insanely over-powered in my opinion. Me and a loremaster friend of mine just got done doing a couple of tier2 instances and our power never once even moved. I literally never dipped below 5k the whole time, and that was without using Victory Banner or power share. I could have had a max power pool of less than 1k and been just fine.

Someone earlier asked is it possible run without Now for Wrath now? In a word: yes. Very possible. I ditched it and still my power never moves. I also plan on getting rid of my melee power skill cost legacy. I'm going to just put my blue banner in my vault to free up space in my inventory along with my power pots. Going to take Song Brother off my hot bar as well, because all of these things are worthless now in my opinion. All anyone has to do is get their fate up a decent amount and you have basically endless power.

It does allow us more flexibility. But it has also in a single blow made every other power-tool on this game obsolete. This was a very bad development decision in my view. I thought I would like the new changes to Fate, but I don't - at all.

Song Brother is still a good healing tool, and it keeps pace with Shield Bro for healing WITHOUT needing a legacy to stay competitive.

I have compared them and I prefer Shield Brother for healing - and I already have the legacy leveled up so that's not an issue for me. So much of Song Brother is geared toward power restoration and conservation. Now since it's so easy to obtain endless power - I really doubt I'll ever have a need for this tool again. Nor power potions, victory banner, tactics: Focus... and the list goes on.

So we just disagree about it being foolish. Though don't worry, if the unforeseen need should ever arise, I still have it in my skill list and can dust it off.

How the hell is this good? They nerfed a great skill, greatly increased skill power cost (making the power-back almost no different) and messed up the power in the game by making you rely on something over time instead of initial (very unstable design there).

Yeah I still prefer Shield-bro for group healing too, though I think they're about the same. Shield is king of tank-healing though, at the same time. So why bother with Song? Song-brother's power restore has been devalued, and that's what set it apart.

I guess I oughta point out that I have 300-something fate after I made my previous statement. Err, round there, I may come in and edit that.